Students can use this volume as an excellent reference for compare-and-contrast skills. From Native American medicine to the early scourge of smallpox in crowded, unsanitary colonial hubs, students can see how far medicine has come since colonial times. Images of Algonquian medicine men and artifacts from a 17th-century surgeon's medical bag give students candid visual points of reference to reinforce the vast differences between colonial medicine and the safe, sterile, often high-technology practice medicine has become today.